Avalon Post

The Park People

I’m trying to figure out what’s going on in the parks in Taiwan.

I recently adopted a dog that was abandoned here. I’ve been a proud dog owner for most of my life, but I put that lifestyle on hold here in Taiwan, mostly due to the fact that my residency here is never guaranteed for a term longer than a year, along with the fact that I live in a tiny apartment. Despite these two facts both continuing to be true, it was too hard to say no to this dog that was near death on the side of the road.

This is not about the dog, though. It just so happens that living in apartment, I need to now walk my dog much more often than I am accustomed, if only so that she can stretch her legs a bit and also relieve herself. Fortunately, there is a small park not more than three or four minutes away from my house, which I have now become quite familiar with over the past four weeks or so.

When I say small, I mean that. It is tiny, nothing more than a corner that was probably unusable for anything else. It’s an odd shape, roughly a triangle with sides that are no longer than around 100 or 150 feet each—it’s been too long since I did math, what does that mean the area of it is?

Well, whatever its area, it’s made even smaller by the fact that it has a circular footpath around the whole thing, and two sets of playground equipment, meaning there’s not exactly a large amount of uninterrupted grass anywhere. There’s a pavilion, a few different sets of exercise equipment as well (typical of Taiwan), and a scattering of other benches and good stuff.

Yet while I say it’s small, believe me, I’m not knocking it. It’s great to have a park so close to the house, especially with lots of amenities. There’s another plus to it: it’s well manicured. Extremely manicured, in fact, and that’s what I’m wondering about.

I quickly came to realize that there are several “park people,” and by that I don’t just mean people who hang out at the park a lot, but people who seem to be workers who are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the park.

My introduction to these park people began when I first started going to the park. Since I was a new person there, and I tended to keep my plastic bags, which I use to pick up my dog’s droppings, in my pocket or messenger bag (prior to use, of course), I had them come up to me and make sure that I understood I needed to clean up after my animal. They were friendly enough about it, but these little “instructional” chats alone got me to carry the plastic bags around out in the open, just so no one would doubt my intentions or knowledge regarding dog excrement.

But even if these chats had not taken place, with the frequency of my appearances at the park, I quickly would’ve realized the same faces there all the time. They weren’t always necessarily working, but they were always there, at least during the weekday working hours. Most of the time, they were just sweeping up the leaves, or watering the grass, or…actually, that’s about all I saw. I assume they also manicure the little flowerbeds and whatnot, but all I really saw was about 95% sweeping, 4% watering of stuff, and 1% of etcetera. Sometimes they were taking a smoke break on the bench by the entrance.

So, I wondered: Who are these people? Why are they here?

I believe there are four of these so-called park people, which to me seems like a pretty large number for the upkeep of such a tiny park, especially given how much time they seem to spend there.

Two of the park people are younger. One’s pretty much always there, the other one seems to be there only sometimes, and I occasionally even wonder if he is just friends with the first guy, hanging out and giving him a helping hand. Then there are two older gentleman, one is a middle-aged man who is quite friendly—I’ve had the most interaction with him out of all the park people. He’s there often, as well, although not quite as often as the first young park person. Lastly, there is a man who looks grandpa-ish, and he seems to be there a lot too, although he only appeared among the park people more recently.

So I wonder, what’s the deal? My first thoughts are that the older ones are some kind of volunteers, motivated by a genuine desire to have a nice park. This seems possible for the oldest park person, but the amount of hours they put in is simply amazing if they’re only volunteers, especially for the middle-aged man. It’s hard to imagine he’s doing it for free, since I’ve actually seen him with his family (it’s a small community, I suppose) and I know he has a couple of kids. It seems most likely that he would need to bring in some sort of income, and couldn’t afford to just volunteer at a park for several hours every day.

For the younger park people, I thought at first perhaps that they were some kind of students volunteering, either as part of some program or club, or for some purpose, perhaps like a park manager internship or something? I mean, I know there probably aren’t “park manager internships,” but something along those lines where it gets you some good experience for something else. But again, this was a lot of time spent at the park, and if they were students, they sure weren’t going to any other classes other than Sweeping 101 and Advanced Flower Watering 302.

So, again for the younger park people, I then considered the darker option, that perhaps they’ve gotten into some sort of trouble and that they were sentenced to work at the park as a form of community service. I suppose this is still possible, it just feels unlikely to me, because they all seem nice, and quite diligent about their work. A lot of times, there hasn’t been anyone “supervising” them or anyone making sure that they were actually doing work or even there. I suppose it’s possible that in Taiwan, even the people doing their community service punishment are just really nice, positive people, but I don’t know, it just seems unlikely to me.

But if no one here is volunteering, or being otherwise compelled to work at the park, what else? Are they all paid employees?

I thought about it. Obviously the economy everywhere is pretty bad right now, and Taiwan is no exception. Maybe that would explain why the younger guys would take the job—any job could help pay the bills. On the other hand, it’s hard to fathom that some guy who has two kids like the middle-aged man could make enough money on whatever the hypothetical pay for these park people might be to support his family. But who knows, perhaps he was a “manager” or something that would carry a nicer salary?

And then I think about a government that is strapped for cash. Would they really employ four people to work at a park that is smaller than my front yard was back home? It seems unlikely, but part of how America got out of the Great Depression was to “hire” anyone to do almost anything, just to get people working, and hoping it all worked out in the end. I suppose it would be possible, but you think you would hear more about the massive government spending on things like rapidly expanding park maintenance budgets if that were the case.

Unfortunately, these questions will likely remain unresolved unless some random person stumbles upon this story and happens to know the ins and outs of the Taiwanese park maintenance system. I personally won’t be going out and asking questions.

Either way, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining or calling for change. The park is quite nice, and it’s good to see people who seem to really care about the condition of the local park, tiny as it may be, working hard at its upkeep every day. It’s just a little amazing that these park people dedicate themselves to this small little greenbelt, no matter whether they are paid to do so, compelled to do so, or simply motivated to do so by a love for having a nice community park.

These are just the things I wonder while my dog tries to sniff out a good spot to go to the bathroom.